Introducing RevolTeens, a new monthly column with Christine Lively

Today we are excited to share with you a new monthly feature that will be highlighting amazing teens doing amazing things. This new column, RevolTeens, will be brought to you each month by Christine Lively. She’s here today to introduce herself and tell you more about the column. At the end, please share with us some of the teens that inspire you in the comments, keeping in mind privacy rights so use first names only and even a fake first name works. Or it can be a public figure. Our goal here is to show how amazing teens can be by sharing stories and shattering stereotypes.

“I’m a middle (or high) school teacher.”

Any of us who has ever told someone this has
inevitably been met with a response along the lines of, “Wow. I can’t imagine
doing that!” or an incredulous “Why?” or “Ugh, teens are
loud/obnoxious/ridiculous.” Sometimes I get a sympathetic, “Better you than
me!” or “I could never do that.” Teens can be unruly, uncouth, and excitable,
for sure. Those same qualities that make some adults cringe at the thought of
spending time with them are the same qualities that make teens irresistible to
those of us who love to work with them.

I have worked in middle and high schools for ten
years now. When I became a teacher and school librarian after staying home with
my own children, my experience with kids was focused on the preschool and
elementary set that my kids were a part of at the time. Little kids misbehavior
is usually seen as adorable and part of a learning process. Painting outside
lines, making a mess at snack time, pushing someone out of the way in line, and
other kinds of transgressions are just part of being a kid and learning. In so
many ways, teens are just bigger and older kids who still make mistakes and
break occasional rules, but when they do, they’re judged quickly and harshly.
They should know better by now, and follow the rules.

Working with teenagers was a bit of a shock to
me at the time. I had loved school and found the order and expectations of the
classroom to be comforting. I knew that not everyone liked school or their
teachers, I didn’t fully appreciate how frustrating school could be for so many
students. The students who surprised me the most were the loud, obnoxious,
angry, and rebellious kids that I encountered every day. How could they walk in
the door with no interest in what we were doing? Why did they question nearly
every instruction I gave? I was frustrated and felt that I just couldn’t get
through to my them. Like every teacher, I thought to myself, “What is wrong
with these kids?” It wasn’t the kids. It was me.

I soon realized that the energy, curiosity, and
rebelliousness of my students was what I admired and genuinely liked the most
about them. They made me laugh and made me think. Where other adults saw them
as obnoxious, I saw them as rebels in the best and most positive way. They
didn’t accept rules without question. They were outraged when they thought they
or their classmates were treated unfairly. They wanted their world to make
sense and to be just. They weren’t going to do anything because someone “said
so.”

Schools are focused strongly on conforming,
behaving, and toeing the line. The path to success is time honored and
unquestioned: Get the best grades. Go to the best college. Get the best job. Do
what you have to do to get there. Any deviation from this path is not just frowned
upon but punished. Teens don’t even have the choice to fail a class any more,
they just get more and more help and retesting until they get a passing grade.
If they hate math and aren’t successful in it, they are assigned an additional
class period of math remediation. So they have to spend twice as much time on a
subject they hate and don’t feel successful in, and give up an elective that
they would have enjoyed. Few students feel able to fight the system and
question the rules. We don’t give them choices or listen to them. We give them
instructions and “because that’s how it works” explanations.

Yet, we know that the rules and traditions are
not the only path to success and so do teens. They see their favorite
musicians, YouTube stars, actors, and business moguls become successful and
being noticed because they break the rules. The heroes of their favorite
movies, books, and news stories are teens or young adults who revolt. Heroes
like Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, Miles Morales, and Starr Carter are heroic
because they question and stand up to the unjust systems they’re living
within. We enjoy these stories too and enjoy them with our kids, but
something happens to us when they become teenagers.

We want teens to be successful just as much as we
want them to be safe and happy. That conflict is overwhelming for parents and
teachers alike.

I remember sitting down with my daughter as she
was about to start middle school. I told her this, “Your job for the next six
years is to get the best grades you can possibly get. It doesn’t matter if your
teacher is a jerk or if the class is stupid. Your grades will determine your
future, and you need to give yourself the best chance you can to be successful
and have choices after you graduate from high school.” I am ashamed to think of
it now. I value grades, college, and traditional success differently now,
but this is still the ingrained message kids and parents hear from teachers,
counselors, administrators, family members, and in media stories and it’s dangerous.
If every teen followed and never questioned the rules, if there wasn’t a kid
revolting, our world wouldn’t change. We need to tell teens that they can
change our world, and celebrate when they do. We need RevolTeens.

There are heroes out there among teens and young
adults. Yes, they make waves, they break rules, and often become the
change agents in the world. Their lives and decisions are the stuff of stories
we retell in novels and on the big and small screen. In this space, I’ll be sharing
stories of teens who challenge authority, make waves, and find success outside
the traditional path. The kids who might sing the song that Tim Minchin wrote
for Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, “We are revolting children, living in revolting
times!”

Watch this space for more RevolTeens.

About Christine Lively

Christine Lively a school librarian in Virginia. I read voraciously, exchange ideas with students, and am a perpetual student. I raise monarch butterflies, cook, clean infrequently and enjoy an extensive hippo collection. Christine blogs at https://hippodillycircus.com/ and you can follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/XineLively

I’m so excited about this. It immediately makes me think of kids like David Hogg. I remember people initially talking about how David wasn’t the best student with the highest grades. I love watching that young man fight to change our world.

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Teen Librarian Toolbox (TLT) is a professional development website for teen librarians, created by Karen Jensen and collecting the experience of four MLS librarians and over 50 collective years of library work. Our mission is to to help libraries serving teens (and anyone who cares about teens) and to foster a community of professional development and resource sharing by providing quality information, discussions, book reviews and more. We welcome guest posts and our book review policy can be found here. We are available for presentations, seminars, and consulting on a limited basis. Contact us for more information.